Patriot Act Surveillance Alert

I learned on the Jim Lehrer News Hour (www.pbs.org/newshour/) this evening (11/7/05) that if you have a bank account, an investment account or use your library card your name along with your e-mail sent and received transactions may now be permanently kept on file in several government agencies. In the name of “information related to terror investigations,” National Security Letters sent by the FBI are now being sent to financial and telecommunication companies throughout the United States asking for such files. Each letter sent by the FBI may result in a company providing dozens or even hundreds of such “confidential” records. This means that hundreds of thousands of such records are now already in Uncle Sam’s data base. This, I believe will be news to many of us.